In the design of integrated circuits, designers need to simulate the performance of the integrated circuits that are being designed. Various simulation tools are available for such a task. For example, Simulation Program with Integrated Circuit Emphasis (SPICE) is a well-known simulation tool designed for this task. The simulation tools need model parameters in order for them to simulate electrical behaviors of the integrated circuits.
FIG. 1 illustrates a work flow in a conventional model constructing and simulation process. In step 100, I-V fitting steps are performed to construct an original set of model parameters (block 102). The original model parameters 102 need to be fine-tuned (step 104) through a plurality of iterations before they can be used by designers. This often takes days or weeks to finish. The refined model parameters are provided to simulation tool 107 (step 106), and designers may use simulation tool 107 to simulate the integrated circuits (block 108).
Situations often occur that the model parameters do not accurately reflect the integrated circuits being designed. Also, the target circuit specification may be updated, which means that the target electrical parameters such as Idsat, Idlin, Vth, and Ioff need to be changed (block 110). This requires the model parameters to be changed to fit the updated target electrical parameters. Accordingly, step 104 needs to be performed again using the new target electrical parameters. Again, step 104 may take days or weeks to finish. Currently, there is no efficient way to quickly generate real-time model parameters from new target electrical parameters.